Chinese cartoons ordered to clean up 'vulgar and violent' storylines

State media claims some of China's best-known cartoon characters, among them
goats, wolfs and bears, are guilty of misleading nation's children

Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, a Chinese television cartoon series that became enormously popular among children since its debut in 2005, was criticized as full of violence on Xinwenlianbo, the most-watched news program in China.

China's media watchdog is expected to publish new regulations relating to the content of cartoons in the coming months in the wake of a series of complaints from parents who fear their children are being led astray by gangs of animated animals.

The Pleasant Goat – a cartoon character sometimes billed as China's answer to Mickey Mouse – was singled out for particularly ferocious criticism by state media.

The goat stars in "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" – a cartoon that tells the story of a trip of Chinese goats including Pleasant goat, Lazy goat, Beautiful goat, Ebullient goat and Slow goat.

The creatures spend their lives trying to escape the clutches of a feckless canine called Big Big Wolf, according a plot summary by the China Daily newspaper.

However, despite the cartoon's apparently harmless storyline, state media outlets suggested it had become a veritable fight club.

Big Big Wolf had been physically assaulted with a frying pan on at least 9,544 occasions, the government news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

Meanwhile, Pleasant Goat had been boiled alive in water 839 times and received no fewer than 1,755 electric shocks.

Another cartoon – Boonie Bears – came under fire for offences that included airing 21 pieces of foul language in just 10 minutes. The program focuses on the lives of two bears who attempt to protect their forest from an unscrupulous logger. But Xinhua claimed the cartoon had led to some children becoming obsessed with electric chainsaws and caused one child to repeatedly shout the word "monster".

Recent months have seen growing chatter in the Chinese media about how cartoon violence is spilling over into real-life.

Earlier this year a young boy reportedly tied two friends to a tree and attempted to set them on fire after seeing a cartoon goat being roasted in the same way on television. The two victims sustained severe burns and their parents are currently suing the Pleasant Goat's producers.

Last month, the Shanghai Daily newspaper noted that while Chinese cartoons were "relatively mild by Western standards" many parents still worried they were sending "wrong messages to [their] impressionable young children." Violent and "illogical" cartoons were being "avidly consumed by uncritical young children who can't yet distinguish between good and bad influences," the newspaper claimed.

Song Wei, a Shanghai nursery teacher, said cartoons had led to both verbal and physical violence among her pupils.

"They hit each other and say things like, 'I'm gonna kill you,' because that's what they see in animations," she said.

He conceded that frying pans had featured in his cartoons on a number of occasions but claimed such attacks did not end in graphic, "bloody scenes." Pleasant Goat had always tried to promote "the right values," Mr Huang told the New Express newspaper.

Writing on Danwei, a blog that focuses on the Chinese media, Jeremy Goldkorn suggested the "Tom and Jerry style" cartoon had fallen victim to an ongoing "culture-cleansing campaign" spearheaded by CCTV.